Obama’s Real Legacy

January 13, 2017

At the end of every President’s term, there is always talk about his “legacy.” It’s inevitable.

It’s been said that every President is remembered for one or two things, usually distilled into a sentence or two. You know: Lincoln preserved the Union and freed the slaves. FDR ended the Great Depression and won WWII. Reagan presided over the greatest economic expansion and brought down the Soviet Union. Things like that.

Sure, they’re simplistic and all that and honest historians can quibble over the details but at the end of the day, we’re talking about a “narrative.” It’s history written in shorthand.

In reality, most of Obama’s legacy will prove ephemeral, given that with stroke of a pen, the new President can override most of his achievements. As we speak, the Congress is already eviscerating Obamacare, his signal legislative accomplishment, even while he still has six days left in office.

There is one area though in which Obama will be remembered and that is the legislative triumph of polyamory, that is to say, the loss of all sexual restraint. Sure, he ran for office being against gay marriage but we all kind of knew that that was a “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” type of thing. He had to say it; it immunized him against charges of being a wild-eyed liberal. I’d say it was good for adding another two or three points to his margin of victory over John McCain.

I’m not sure whether Obama led the way in this regards or whether he merely caught up with the culture but in the end it doesn’t matter. We live in an immoral universe with no legal enforcement of sexuality. The old cliche about we shouldn’t “legislate morality” has come to fruition. That’s going to be his real legacy in my opinion.

When Big Gay, Inc. told us all they wanted was “marriage equality” the namby-pamby among us were taken aback. “Oh come on now, Bob,” said Madge. “All that chi-chi couple who lives next door wants is to have what we have.” And like most spineless, deracinated and irreligious American men, we threw in the towel.

Well, the joke’s on us. It was never about Percy and Bruce plighting their troth to each other “eschewing all others ’til death us do part” in some nice, liturgical service at the local Episcopal church. (With an elegant reception afterwards.) That was never game plan and those of us who knew better were shamed and humiliated into silence.

The defeat is now complete. Marriage as traditionally understood throughout every era and every culture on every continent is now dead. Earlier this year, Italy (the seat of the Roman Catholic Church) passed a law that said marital fidelity was no longer a requirement for marriage. I wonder how many young people are going to take the Big Step knowing that there’s no real reason to. Well played, Big Gay, well played.

Think on that. And if you do, think about what we have lost. And give a thought as to whether we can get it back.

Things really are that stark. Having trouble? I’ll make it easy for you. Back in early October, Billy Bush released an Access Hollywood tape. That tape. You know the one I’m talking about. In it, Donald Trump, then on The Apprentice was recorded saying things about how easy it is to approach certain women in the crudest possible terms. “Locker-room talk” his defenders (myself included) said. The nation was rightly shocked, even those of us who supported him.

Now, I’ll be honest. It’s not like I haven’t descended into gutter-talk at various times in my life. Most every red-blooded American man I know has used words to that effect. And my actions were more egregious at times. In junior high, my cousin and I (the token Greeks of Horace Mann) used to pinch girls on the butt as we rounded the corner and they were putting their books in their lockers. It’s what we did. They didn’t seem to mind; I dare say that if we didn’t some of them would’ve been disappointed. But looking back, I’m not proud of it. And if I had a daughter who had had her butt pinched by some horny eighth grader, I’d have spontaneously combusted. So yeah, I’m a hypocrite.

But aren’t we all? Wasn’t it Churchill who said that “hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue”? Who among us is perfect in this regard? That’s not the point however. The point is that we are all painfully aware of our shortcomings. And none of us would want to live in regime of open licentiousness. That is precisely what Trump’s boorish behavior exposed. That is the logical end-result of throwing away the restraints of modesty.

The words of course were grotesque. But only because they described a behavior that is reprehensible. After all, words themselves have no inherent physical power. Saying you can grab a woman’s genitalia is not the same thing as actually grabbing a woman’s genitalia. That should be obvious.

But it’s words which vocalize thoughts and then lead to actions. They are the missing link between thoughts and actions. That’s why we circumscribe our words. We don’t really say what we think especially when our thoughts are shameful. At least that’s always been the modus vivendi for most of us.

That’s all gone by the wayside now. Barack Obama’s legacy can be encapsulated by the desire of grown men wanting to share a public restroom with nine-year-old girls. And why not? What’s wrong with that? I mean, really: what’s wrong with that?

What’s that you say: paedophilia? Are you sure about that? What makes you think that having sex with children is wrong? We used to believe that about two men having sex with each other and calling it marriage. Why even Senators Obama and Hillary Clinton thought that at one time. In an earlier time, the Armed Forces used to flog and sometimes, execute, homosexuals. The egregiousness of homosexuality and its threat to civilization was so obvious that Hillary’s husband actually signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act back in the Dark Ages.

And not just homosexuality. Other sexual sins have rightly been condemned in the past: bastardy, polygamy, bigamy, bestiality and of course, paedophilia. Was that such a bad thing? We all understood that such proscriptions were necessary even when some of us were prone to them. The law is not only proscriptive but punitive and not because it was set up by some bluenoses who couldn’t get a date to the prom.

The law by its very nature is didactic. Do you want to have sex? Marry a nice girl. Do you wish that your husband looked like Antonio Banderas? Well, close your eyes and imagine that that’s what he looks like. Channel all your energies in that direction. Not only will you have a nice house full of children but maybe somebody to take care of you when you’re old. It’s pretty much that simple.

So, have we sunk irreversibly into the abyss?

Believe it or not, I don’t think so. Leaving aside the religious element, we can’t ever escape from physical reality. The words which Trump spoke in the Access Hollywood tape laid bare a horrific possibility, one in which men walk down the street and feel no compunction whatsoever about fondling women. Or smoking-hot high school teachers grabbing fifteen-year-old boys by the crotch and performing fellatio on them in between second and third hour. Or husbands and wives entering into marriage with no intention of keeping their marital beds undefiled.

I can’t help but think that as more of us contemplate this burgeoning reality, that the pendulum will naturally swing back. Or more likely, snap violently back. It may be that modesty, coupled with not a little hypocrisy, is in reality the natural state of man.

I hope so. Because for all of my own boisterous, youthful talk, I never really wanted to treat a woman in ways that my words described. Not really. At the end of the day all I really wanted was a loving relationship with a woman, even if it wasn’t to be permanent. I don’t think any normal man –Donald Trump included–subscribes to the “pump and dump” phenomenon that is extolled in the Hip Hop culture. It’s empty, it’s meaningless and unless you’re fabulously wealthy, not possible.

The fact that Obama has created a Federal ministry to make sure that men can enter any bathroom they want tells me that it’s only through the services of the leviathan state that such an idiotic sexual regime can be realized. But remember: all secular leviathans, from the French Directorate to the Soviet Union to the European Union are doomed to fail.

It would be ironic indeed that some future generation is more prim and proper than the present one. And some historians looking back from the vantage point of say, 2030, wonder why licentiousness did not endure. It’s possible that “marriage equality” will be nothing more than a blip, not unlike the witch hysteria that gripped Salem, Massachusetts for a few months in the seventeenth century. And that Obama will be nothing but an asterisk in the line of Presidents, not unlike one of the Barracks Room Emperors of the later Roman Empire whose name and dates nobody will be able to recall with any specificity.

Maybe I’m being too hopeful by half, but I truly believe that his legacy will be that inconsequential.

Comments

The good news George is that the pendulum has finally begun to swing back to some form of sanity. Like the saying “no one wants to watch a sausage being made “. Well the progressive liberals have finally been exposed for all to see their ugly methods and desires. Well written George couldn’t agree more. Eight years of Obama has awakened the silent majority into the ugly reality the progressive left has brought us to. Sometimes a good slap is needed to wake us from our denial of the ugly reality befallen us. How we continue to react will decide our future.

There is no such thing as “gay marriage”. What sodomite homosexuals do to one another is filthy, sick and evil and an abomination according to the law of God. It is not possible to bless it or make it into a mystery of the Church.

It begins with traditional marriage being exclusively good. Throughout all ages and all places, marriage has been the union of one man and one woman, notwithstanding polygamous societies which have remained primitive or died out.

New generations always try to change things up, but there are times when they discover the reason for some traditions is not because they are old but because they are true.

Once upon a time, before Christ enabled such demons to be cast out, Moses was told by God to execute all who practiced homosexual sodomy without mercy. That was good and holy. It was the only way at the time to kill the psychosis/possession that causes it. Now, there are kinder ways. But this unspeakably evil abomination is still in need of eradication.

In the interest of perspective, if I understand this correctly, the Orthodox Service of Marriage prays to our God “the Priest of mystical and pure marriage, and the Ordainer of the law of the marriage of the body” for chastity [σωφροσύνη]; a “a blameless life,” an “honourable marriage and a bed undefiled,”; that the Lord would “preserve their bed unassailed,” all in an “indissoluble bond of love,”; prays that our God

Who hast sent forth Your truth upon Your inheritance, and Your covenant unto Your servants our fathers, even Your elect, from generation to generation: Look upon Your servant, N., and upon Your handmaid, N., and establish and make stable their betrothal in faith, and in oneness of mind, in truth and in love. For You, O Lord, have declared that a pledge should be given and confirmed in all things.

and , finally at the Crowning, emphatically indicates that, “for by You is the husband united unto the wife Unite them in one mind: wed them. into one flesh.” Yet it is perfectly reasonable to believe that our same God of holiness, purity, chastity, and Who upholds the bond and pledge of commitment and love would find it acceptable and “allow” a man to maintain sexual relationships with concubines outside the exclusive relationship of a single man and woman, whom we have called upon the Lord to “stretch out now also Your hand from Your holy dwelling-place, and join.” This according to the argument, “is inherently good.” C-r-a-z-y-t-o-w-n.

It is not I who can enlighten you, but God. Traditional marriage is good because it is from God. It is good in the same sense God regarded his creation as good in Genesis. But when we look around, we see that creation has fallen away — there’s pestilence, suffering, evil. Traditional marriage is like creation, it is good but has fallen and that’s why it doesn’t always seem “good.” Homosexual marriage, however, was never a creation or ordinance of God, so it was never good to begin with and therefore has no chance to be restored to good the way a rocky traditional marriage could. Also, homosexual marriage cannot otherwise be made good by man, because everything good comes from God. Homosexual marriage is a creation of man, not of God. It is a result of self-worship, and therefore a form of idolatry.

If a woman is only pleased in life to spend her life with another woman; call it unnatural, call it selfish, call it idolatry, but better that woman not be married to any man than make some poor fool miserable.

As to whether she ought marry that women; therein lies the debate.

As to God enlightening me or anyone; aren’t you discounting Christ, his Apostles, bishops, and priests?

My original responses about gay marriage still holds. It does not have bother me at this point.

To suggest I need enlightenment is really just a way to be offensive. It is not how Christ would speak to a heretic, the fool, or a priest.

Well, Christ is God. I hope God enlightens you, the same way one might wish children to attain more knowledge. I regret that that offends you but as the Lord says we are to receive the kingdom of heaven as children in order to enter it.

It’s fine for a woman not to be married to a man, the Church counts such women among the saints. None of them were married to other women. The Church has never taught that everyone must be married. In fact, St. Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthians that it is better not to be married.

The problem is that [homosexuals hate themselves because a man raped them when they were boys and cannot] stand the shame of it. God allows us to hate ourselves only so long without consequence because of the effect it has on others. You will do unto others as you would have others do unto you. If you hate yourself, you are a danger to yourself and everyone around you, especially male children.

God commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Having hate for [themselves they] can’t love anyone else. I’m sure it is horrible. I’m sure there’s a cure. But that’s the way it is.

“Homosexual marriage” or homosexual “couplings” – this is simply a term for the continuing practice of homosexual sodomy, which is punished by Almighty God with eternal hellfire. And there is absolutely no escape from that fact.

There is no such thing as “traditional marriage.” There is only marriage. “Non-traditional marriage” ie: homosexual couplings are not a marriage at all as attested by both natural law and the moral tradition. (Same-sex couplings are naturally sterile; sodomy cannot be equated with heterosexual intercourse since the anal canal is designed for excretion, not penetration, etc. etc.)

Calling the homosexual coupling a marriage does violence to language just as sodomy does violence to the soul of the actors and also to nature. Sodomy is a repudiation of nature and thus God, and the effects of the sin have ramifications far beyond the actors themselves.

In philosophical terms sodomy displays an inversion; the creative prowess of man — a prowess that replicates in a natural way the very character of God, ie: the creation of new life — is turned in on itself. When a man deposits his creative seed in the waste canal of another man (or woman) he exalts death over life. It is a nihilistic act just behind suicide. That’s why it does such violence to the soul.

Societies that elevate sodomy (and abortion; the two are related) as a social good have lost faith in their future. They are in the throes of decay and death.

+ + + + +

Anonymous, you need to read more. Start with my essay on Progressive/Liberalism and “homosexual marriage.” You’ll see that although there are many who are confused (and some deluded) about homosexual couplings, the reasons for advancing the gay agenda reach far beyond notions of fairness or to put in in your words: “There is no way we can say homosexual marriages are not good.” Actually the reverse is true.

I have read your opinions on this matter and I don’t agree with them fully Fr. Jacobse. Not because your heart is wrong, though, and despite your typical patronizing tone a priest often takes. “you need to read more” No, you go read Obergefell Fr.. It is a pretty straightforward case and the dissent was exceptionally poor. The ratifyers [sic] of the 14th certainly didn’t see Obergefell coming, but it did. The dissenters could only complain about the court interpreting the 14th in an unexpected fashion, but deep down they were complaining about the 14th, or shedding light that repealing the 14th could change the law.

While I am not personally a fan, nor advocate for homosexual ‘call it what you want’, I can tell you that I think if you want American culture to not allow it [gay marriage] as a freedom; you will need a scientific basis beyond two vaginas cannot be connected, or the anus is for excrement. Both these arguments are simplistic and nearly non-sequiturs.

I find your approach to the subject matter pissing into the wind, yet we agree on a fundamental possibility that gay marriage might well be a social ill. You never suggest epidemiological fact or study. It is going to take something far more concrete than ‘it isn’t natural’ or geese don’t. Perhaps a repeal of the 14th?

Sorry. I’m basically saying if you are going to write position papers on this subject; you need to take them up a notch with how gay marriage can cause greater social harm by hypothesis, proof, and fact. Even if yours is just opinion, tell us why two women who never leave their house are a social harm to the rest of us. I don’t care about whether they are unnatural.

Sorry. I have read your opinions and to me they are weak arguments against. Leverage my opinion. It is offered freely and in a good spirit.

Anon, I appreciate your legal acumen regarding Obergefel but you assume too much if you posit that the other side’s argument was weaker. It was (and is) not. Marriage is marriage. Civilization is built upon it. Always has been, always will be.

By granting the anti-traditionalists a toe-hold in the 14th Amendment, you open the door to other counter-intuitive arguments regarding sexuality. Or more specifically the loss of restraint which is also a building block for civilization.

The most common being that if we consider the passions to be foundational to a person’s being, then we have to legalize polygyny as most heterosexual males are by inclination polygamous and most heterosexual females hypergamous. That’s rooted in nature.

I suggest nature is not the best defense and you respond with more nature?

Polygamy can easily be shown to cause social harms. A polygamous father cannot spend as much time with each partner and each child. Fact. A father can require the wives to work for him as indentured servants which is unlawful by hmmm which amendment was that?

You just believe the slippery slope fallacy and that won’t make it happen.

Sure, my post is a little hard on Fr. Jacobse, but read the last line.

So how are two lesbians living in a shack in Alaska a social ill? I want to know.

Sorry, but yes, I’ll respond with more “nature”, specifically that civilization can only exist if the foundation is the family.

BTW, I’m glad that you agree on the violence that is inherent to polygamy. Monogamy is what God intended for the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people. That doesn’t mean that everybody has to be married.

As for the two lesbians living in a shack in Alaska, tell me where we have ever said that that couldn’t be an option for two consenting adults? All Christians have ever said is that the courts should not deform the term marriage to meaning something that it never was. That’s all.

So how are two lesbians living in a shack in Alaska a social ill? I want to know.

In the same way, albeit conversely, that two monks living in that same shack can save the entire world by their righteousness. Nothing is ever done in private; and no act, not matter how small or seemingly insignificant, can fail to affect all of creation.

heterosexual males are by inclination polygamous and most heterosexual females hypergamous. That’s rooted in nature

Certainly you meant to clarify, Mr. Michalopulos, that even though you cannot substantiate this cynical, dark assertion, you were referring specifically to our disobedient, and willful fallen nature, and not attributing such characteristics to the Creation, “as it was in the beginning?”

Dr S, all I know is what I see. And studied in college anthropology. At that time, we were taught that 75% of all cultures are polygamous. Even in official monogamous cultures, 40% of the men 60% of the women. Donald Trump got three over a course of 50 years. Of his two ex-wives, only one was able to remarry.

Long story short: outside of Europe (where natural selection and environmental pressures rewarded monogamy) polygamous cultures exist only because women allow them to exist. They could shut it down tomorrow if they were so inclined. Since they d]won’t, we must assume that there is a biological imperative that is operative which favors sharing a single male embedded in their nature.

Case in point: several years ago, I worked with a more elderly woman who had been a missionary (along with her husband) in East Africa. The people were animists (not Moslem) and yet they practiced polygamy. I asked he why the women put up with it. She told me that because of female genital mutilation (FGM), intercourse was very painful for them. Thus it was in their interest to “farm out” this duty, i.e. spread themselves out as thinly as possible, so that they could minimize their exposure to intercourse.

This does not address the question I asked you. You attribute, in my estimation, abhorrence to “nature.” There are further, in my estimation, considerable attempts on this site – relying upon blasphemy against the Holy Fathers – suggesting that abhorrence is acceptable, is in fact, “natural” and condoned by the Creator and sustainer of virginity, chastity, and purity. As I read the Patristic Tradition of the Church, attributing the source of abhorrence to God is heresy and impossibly according to nature, “as it was in the beginning.” I am well aware of the reality of our human condition – though I believe your thesis improperly attempts to generalize far too broadly than you can defend – but if you are attributing abhorrence to anything other than our corrupted and fallen humanity, you are gravely mistaken.

Obergefell is bound to identity politics of the left. The ideas of the left are nestled in a cradle of victimization as most of the culture destroying ideas of the left usually are, at least in Western Europe and America. Identity politics erodes the moral ties that binds people together in ways that foster stability and progress by destroying the the moral restraints that channel male sexual energy into creative pursuits. You will notice that in leftist popular thought the victims of highest standing are often the sexual libertines and increasingly people with mental disorders (transgenderism) . The cult of victimization in other words often serves those who would prefer to dissipate their sexual energy into pleasures that do not foster life.

Tell me, how would you reason against this: Virtuous Pedophiles? This site is run by the man who Salon Magazine profiled a while back (article since taken down) in their effort to normalize pedophilia and invokes the same reasoning employed by those who defend Obergefell especially the appeal to victimization.

The cult of victimization has deeper precepts of course, the chief one being a cultural shift in anthropological reasoning, ie: feelings (passions in Orthodox terminology) are the ground of self-identity. You are what you feel. The passions become essentialized; what ever sexual passion you might feel determines who you are. Drop this belief (heresy really) into that cradle of victimization and emotional responses and moral confusion are the inevitable results (who dares argue against a victim?).

Thirty states had same-sex marriage bans in place by 2012 as the issue heated up nationally from the late 1990s forward and the number was growing. Many of the states saw the bans struck down by local federal courts which drove the issue into SCOTUS. Obergefell is a clumsy, heavy handed ruling as the dissents make clear. The 5-4 split decision mirrors the split in the country. It was and remains a highly divisive ruling.

With the repudiation of the Progressive/Liberal agenda in the national election not to mention the devastating Democratic losses on the state level all through Obama’s tenure, I think you will start seeing more state resistance to the encroachments of the Federal courts. This is not as settled as you think.

Fr Hans, I remember you saying something like this in a dignified soiree several of us priests held during a church convention in Chicago several years ago. Precisely, you said, “The promotion of the normalization of homosexual so-called “marriage” will come even to the Supreme Court where it will eventually prevail. But then some 5-6 years afterward, folks will wake up and say, ‘Hey, we don’t like this.’ And then the return to moral and social sanity will begin.”

I’m heartened by this election and what appears to be an ever more powerful surge of right-mindedness in these areas, as in many others.

You can argue against a victim if their action creates more victims, but not if their action has no greater social harm.

We can disagree that the dissent in Obergefell was weak. I read it and am not a lawyer, but to me it was weak to suggest the majority erred in applying the 14th. The 14th is that same rag that stopped government from displaying a cross. Many liberals even do not like the 14th.

By dissent suggesting the 14th was misapplied; the door was opened for a reinterpretation, but I thought the dissent could have been focused on something else.

Shouldn’t we be more concerned about gay marriage causing a social harm greater than your disgust?

The greater harm is legion. First, you have a union of two males possessed by self hatred, probably as a result of having been raped by another such male as a child. The one in whom the psychosis is most pronounced will be Bruce, the other Betty. Both are a danger to all male children. Homosexuality/pedophilia is one psychosis. It’s simply that the self-hatred and shame metastasize over time in Bruces so that they are no longer content with hating/shaming/sodomizing Bettys, but long to be the perpetrator of the experience which created them. That is why “gay” couples, “gay’ marriage and “gay” adoption are an abomination. That is the means by which the evil psychosis replicates itself.

Hail the new, reconfigured, reconstituted “Patristic” vocation of our progressive and enlightened modernity. An Orthodox Christan priest addresses one of the most significant moral crises of our living generation – the abomination of the debasement of Christian marriage as the living icon and metaphoric reality of the relationship of Christ and the Church – yet does not once refer to our God, His Only-begotten Son and our Savior, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Scripture, the Patristic teachings of the Holy Fathers, nor reference our Holy Tradition. Breathtaking! This is what “traditionalism” has bought us? Socio-cultural babble, jingoist “conservative” neologisms, and bad philosophy posing as “theology” without the “theos.” Thanks to God no one outside of the playground of the internet takes this seriously.

Michael, What the heck are you talking about? Everything Fr. Hans wrote is accurate and true, and quite ORTHODOX Christian from both a Scriptural perspective and in line with the Tradition and teaching of the Orthodox Christian Church for the last two thousand years.

You’re attacking Fr. Hans for preaching truthfully and righteously. Your pride and hatred are blinding you and clouding your judgment and discernment. You’re insulting him for no reason. Shameful!

I resent your characterization of my motivation as “prideful,” and/or intended to insult or attack. I have never met Fr. Hans, and I might add, the same holds true for Fr. Alexander Webster, nor they me. I speak to them only in their vocation as Orthodox Christian priests. More importantly, my words rarely, if ever, constitute my personal opinion (and I always attempt to clarify & distinguish my personal); as I have noted for what is now years on this site, I choose my words carefully, and apply them succinctly in order that they do not mislead or confuse. In any case, it is always my intention to “join with the Holy Fathers before us,” and scrupulously cite who and from where I quote. This is to say that God has not blessed me as an “original thinker,” but rather as one who recalls and is capable of setting forth the Patristic Tradition of the Church in the words of those who defined it.

Further, you seem to mistake my “love for the Truth” (cf. ἰδοὺ γὰρ ἀλήθειαν ἠγάπησας, Ps. 50:8, LXX) for a need to be “right.” I have continuously invited correction as to matters of substance; demonstrate to me that I am wrong, and I will accept responsibility for my error immediately, and repent of my error openly. I respect that Mr. Michalopolus is generally quick to acknowledge an error, I make it a practice, and, as Hamlet said, “the rest is silence.”

Finally, Centurion, where I am from – pursuant to my background and training – and consistent with both the spirit and actions of the Holy Fathers, should you disagree with anything I have written, it is incumbent on you to correct me from the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Fathers, the Canonical literature of the Church, and our Holy Tradition. Your personal interpretation as to what is “accurate and true, and quite ORTHODOX Christian,” or your “reaction” to my “style” is not the issue. If I have spoken an untruth, correct me. I invite you.

This may sound a bit nuts, but in a twisted hypothetical. Let’s imagine Trump an Orthodox Christian, confessing to his spiritual father. Now take some of his words, out of context , from the Access Hollywood tape, it plays like a man confessing to a priest. “Yes father I can’t help myself, I see beautiful women, and I just want to kiss them….oh this women, I wanted her so bad, I took her furniture shopping, she was married, and turned me down. Oh some of these woman are just so easy, a little money, and power, father, and most let me do anything I want with them, even grab their p**sy, yes, it’s true father. What am I to do father?

Trump was wrong, and brutal in his honesty to Billy Bush, but no doubt, a high percentage of woman are put into a brainless state, with men of wealth, power, and prestige, only to find themselves in a horrible marriage, or in a empty bed without a ring. Trump is like a little fat boy, surrounded by donuts!

If we are truly to be judged by our thoughts, not many of us will be seated at The Banquet Table of Christ. Lord have Mercy.

Actually, Trump did the right thing according to the tape. You can tell from his comments that he didn’t know she was married before he hit on her. He says in the tape that as a response, she told him she was married and he was fine with that.

That’s what men are supposed to do, avoid adultery. Adultery in the Bible and the Church Fathers always involves a married woman. In fact, that is what adultery is: a man other than her husband having sex with a married woman.

JFK, a practicing Catholic, was known for screwing virtually any and every woman he could get his hands on. Presumably, he confessed to a Catholic priest at some point during his presidency .
Trump , after all, was not elected clergyman, but President, nor is he an Orthodox Christian.(On a side note, his wife will be the first Slavic First Lady, a native of Slovenia).
Some years ago, when Michael Dukakis was the Democratic candidate, a seminarian approached a well known Greek Orthodox Archpriest about Dukakis’s status in the Church. The seminarian pointed out that Dukakis, as an Orthodox Christian married to a Jewish woman, was ineligible to recieve Holy Communion according to the statues of the Greek Archdiocese.
The priest, in his accented English, gave a very Byzantine answer, “Dukakis? He is not running for Patriarch. He is not running for Bishop. He is running for President”.

Estonian Slovak,
Economia, or a blind eye is usually granted to those with deep pockets, and power, in the GOA. Example: The pro-abortion Governor of New York just recently received the highest humanitarian award(Athenagoras) from our church. Hopefully this tradition will not also include, open, proud, and active homosexuals, in the future.

I’m not nearly as “nice” as George about this. I want to see the whole feminist, matriarchal abomination burnt to the ground without a trace left. I hope Trump is the one to light the fire and fan the flames. It’s dry as a bone. It will catch easily.

Many will not like it and think it is neither right nor fair. That’s a shame. I do not think that the Gospel According to Gloria Steinem is right or fair. Neither do most men who have suffered under its legislative enforcement.

Nonetheless, I agree with George that Obama’s legacy will not be particularly noteworthy. He will be remembered for Obamacare and the widening of coverage and benefits. It will also be remembered that Obamacare had to be repealed and replaced with something less disfunctional. Apart from that, Obamaphones (the Lifeline phones that are subsidized and given out for free to Medicaid and Food Stamp recipients) will be the other memorable accomplishment.

Other than that, it was just more “humanitarian” military adventurism and Progressive bs which will fade into the dustbin of history.

When will society wake up and realize that, aside from the total inappropriateness of a 35-year-old man urinating next to a 9-year-old girl in a bathroom, who suffers the most with co-ed/transgender/whatever bathrooms?

It’s the women! Who leaves toilet seats up all the time? Who “misses” all to often when they are urinating and stuff ends up all over the toilet seat and the floor? Who suffers when she has to clean up that mess in a public restroom in order to lower the toilet seat and do her business?

Every time I use a public “genderless” bathroom at a coffee shop or somewhere similar, it is uniformly disgusting and I get out as soon as I can (even a public mens room is typically disgusting). I always imagined women’s bathrooms to be, well, cleaner, though I’ve never been in one to find out. I do wonder why on earth would women want men in their bathrooms? Then it hits me, the truth of the matter, like a rock thrown right in my face — that traditional morality steeped in our traditional Christian faith has elevated women and honored women more than anything else in the history of the world.

Gay, Inc., or Progressive, Inc., or whatever you want to call them are truly satanic, in that they dress themselves in the shroud of “progress” and “virtue,” all the while being more backward that most will ever be able to imagine. If we think that Lena Dunham and her ilk represent women’s progress, then our culture is more sick than most of us admit. All of us in the modern, secular Western world should be very careful what we wish for. Evil is dressing itself as virtue, and we eagerly ingest it every day.

Homosexual marriage will be an enduring legacy of Obama’s because it is a result of a Supreme Court ruling, not an executive order which President Trump would be able to revoke with a flourish of his own pen. It is unlikely that even with a conservative replacement for Scalia the Court would reverse itself so soon. The pendulum would not only have to snap back, but stay back for a long time in order for something like Federal Marriage Amendment to be ratified.

Not even in pagan Rome’s most hedonistic days did they legalize marrying two men. A real travesty.

Nope. A more conservative Supreme Court could overrule any case protecting “homosexual marriage” as well as abortion. The Court’s rulings on homosexuality are very recent and the abortion ruling was in 1973, since which the Court has revised it more than once. Stare decisis does not dictate that any of this evil filth is set in stone. Plessy v. Ferguson was the law for over fifty years before it was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education.

We’re just getting started. It’s a house of cards and it’s all coming down.

The dissenters really only had a big problem with the 14th Amendment. They couldn’t complain about the 14th, because it isn’t what jurists do. Instead they complained about the other jurists interpreting the 14th in a new way.

Now, there are some problems with the 14th. If you had told anyone ratifying the 14th would result in homosexual marriage; they would have never passed it.

But, if you believe a different scotus will ‘overturn’ Obergefell; you are mistaken.

What I actually really believe is that since Progressive Liberals have already rejected the notion that the words of the Constitution have objective meaning, discernible by the intent of its authors, justices who wish to dispense with abortion and protections for “homosexual rights” will not in any way be hindered by original intent if it gets in the way, which I doubt it will.

The Court can reverse itself, but rarely so soon. That’s my point. As you observed, it took 50 years for Plessy to be overturned. Your other example regarding homosexual acts, was sooner – 17 years – but that was in the direction of increasing licentiousness. And it’s easier to increase license then it is to take it away.

All right, now we’re getting down to cases. Trump needs to proceed cautiously here.

I would not apologize for anything at all if I were him. However, Trump probably has pushed a bit harder than he needed to vis a vis the black community. If he did actually say that the Blacks and Hispanics that were later exonerated for rape “must be guilty of something” then he needs to back up and take a deep breath.

It’s all about respect, in Russian “уважение”. In US relations with Russia and our internal black/white relations, it’s about respect.

There’s a long history. Part of it is white racism. That is the larger part. Whites, emulating Muslim Arabs who first dealt in it, either bought [from black chieftans/leaders] or captured black slaves and brought them back to America. This was chattel slavery, slavery based on race. Blacks were treated like a different species, not like men. That is something we inherited from the Enlightenment, the notion that we did not necessarily all have one father. Darwin merely put the cherry in top.

On further reflection, Obama’s real legacy was to draw each of us into the Nihilism of “hope and change” without the Cross or repentance.

Even what seems a reasonable and necessary rational counter can easily be the same poison.

It is it possible that we see the destruction of the “thou shalt” being acted out in front of us?

Is it possible the nihilist revolution unleashed in the world in 1848 with its precursor in the American Revolution, founded so strongly in the lie that man is the measure of all things because God is not with us, is finally reached a zeinth of destruction because the death of God is so widely accepted even among those who say we believe in one God…?

Racial relations will have the opportunity to improve under Trump, for example, but it will take a catharsis for that to happen.

The line between good and evil runs through the human heart, not along a line drawn across the country. Slavery in the Old South was rooted in Scripture but went astray in its assumptions about the nature of mankind. Both indentured servitude and chattel slavery were based on the way the Old Testament Hebrews treated slaves. Hebrew slaves corresponded to indentured servants. After seven years of servitude, they were to be freed or, if they elected to stay, would become permanent. Non-Hebrew slaves corresponded to our chattel slavery. Chattel slaves could be enslaved for life.

The problem with our system was that some slave owners in the South, not all but some, thought of black slaves as a fundamentally different type of creature than whites – essentially, a different species. This enabled more severe treatment than would have occurred if the slaves had been of the same race. When one forgets that the slave is a brother and essentially no different than the master except in his place in the hierarchy, then the institution is ripe for the devil to inspire abuse. Of course, there were other differences which exacerbated the situation. Blacks came from Africa and had a different language, culture and often religion, so whites assumed they were dramatically less intelligent, more like animals. Evenso, even animals deserve respect. When that is lacking, problems arise. Bear in mind it took much longer for Western whites to discover that there were no truly dramatic differences in intelligence, only marginal ones.

Sad history. The real good guys in the Civil War, IMHO, were the gradual emancipationists like Lee and a number of the Southern leadership. They realized that abolition would result in a bloodbath because you are releasing a huge number of people into society who have sometimes been mistreated, resent their former masters and have no property or means of their own to be self reliant. That is a recipe for widespread apocalyptic level violence.

The Northern industrialists were motivated by a desire for cheap labor and a desire to keep the South’s cotton captive through tariff policy to feed Northern mills which wished to occupy the American market. The religious abolitionists were a very small segment of the Northern population. They were true fanatics. They believed that God demanded immediate emancipation regardless of the cost in terms of social violence. Moreover, they had no biblical case against the institution of slavery, per se, which is assumed to be normal in the Scriptures and by most of the Fathers.

Big bad mess. Abolition would have been a bloodbath. The War was a bloodbath of 600,000 dead, our most costly war by far. Only gradual emancipation could have obtained a different result.

So, time to move on and quit blaming and demanding restitution for acts done by no living person. But it must be handled diplomatically because the DNC has lied to the black community for so long and in such twisted ways as to create an economic plantation. Blacks are very confused about what is transpiring these days and it unsettles them.

Clearly people here don’t understand. The POTUS is for ALL the PEOPLE OF THE U.S. The straight, the LBG, the disabled, THE SINNERS, etc. The POTUS is NOT Christian leader, but the leader of a very diverse America. Understand, Roe vs Wade was done under Nixon in 1973. If the Repubs were going to stop it, why didn’t they? The impeachment & removal of Trump case has already begun. The Repubs will destroy America!

Roe vs Wade was decided by the US Supreme Court. Nixon had nothing to do with it. With the exception of President Reagan, most Republicans, have been a disappointment. Trump has talked, the talk, now let’s hope, he walks, the walk!

Nixon appointed Harry Blackman to the Supreme Court, seems like he had key role in producing Roe vs Wade. No need to mention other Republican pro-abort Supreme Court appointments. They just wanted to keep the pro-life carrot dangling in front of pro-life voters, who know we needed 5 justices to repeal Roe. They most cynically wanted to keep the issue as it was, to keep their carrot dangling. Godless skull and bones mass murders. God is sending a 50 gigaton methane burp up their noses to kill all life in the sea. The Holy God plays hardball, ask Sodom or Pharaoh about it.India is going cashless, with many other countries following suit soon. The mark is here, as are the 1st,2nd, and 3rd bowls of the WRATH OF GOD. Trump has no card to trump this with, he can only begin to legally enact the Vision so the people not perish.I am not going to be holding my breath waiting for him to even attempt to appease a very infinitely powerful Just God, who said in the revelation ,He would do this. The last 3 bowls are total war against the beast and the it’s mark. Prof Guy McPherison is predicting global human extinction by 2030. We are in the time of unmatched human suffering, which the Christ predicted. His Word never returns to HIM void.

Some of you wondered why I had given up on America, on the idea that God could possibly reform it, call it to repentance and use it as a vehicle for His will. Allow me to elucidate how really bad it has gotten in this country through the example of one, seemingly innocent, song that you hear on the radio most days. If you have been suspicious that there might be a battle between good and evil, angels and demons, God and the devil, going on right under your noses and throughout our society, well, suspect no more. It is.

“The song is highly unusual for a popular single in featuring no chorus, combining disparate musical styles and containing lyrics which eschew conventional love-based narratives for allusions to murder and nihilism.[” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Rhapsody,

“Mercury refused to explain his composition other than saying it was about relationships; the band is still protective of the song’s secret.[14] Brian May supports suggestions that the song contained veiled references to Mercury’s personal traumas. He recalls “Freddie was a very complex person: flippant and funny on the surface, but he concealed insecurities and problems in squaring up his life with his childhood. He never explained the lyrics, but I think he put a lot of himself into that song.”[33] May, though, says the band had agreed that the core of a lyric was a private issue for the composer.[14] In a BBC Three documentary about the making of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, Roger Taylor maintains that the true meaning of the song is “fairly self-explanatory with just a bit of nonsense in the middle”.[13]” – ibid

“When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations (refers to a book published in Iran called The March of the Black Queen by Sarah Sefati and Farhad Arkani, which included the whole biography of the band and complete lyrics with Persian translation (2000)). In the explanation, Queen states that “Bohemian Rhapsody” is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, “Bismillah” (In the name of God in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (The devil in Arabic).[35]” – ibid

“Still others interpreted them as Mercury’s way of dealing with personal issues.[14] Music scholar Sheila Whiteley observes that Mercury reached a turning point in his personal life in the year he wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody”.[15] He had been living with Mary Austin for seven years but had just embarked on his first love affair with a man. She suggests that the song provides an insight into Mercury’s emotional state at the time, “living with Mary (‘Mamma’, as in Mother Mary) and wanting to break away (‘Mamma Mia let me go’)”.[32]” – ibid

Homosexual men are generally made, “turned” if you will – the vast majority, anyway. And how is this accomplished? That is what the song is about. “I will not let you go.” “Beelzebub has a devil devil put aside for me . . .”

It is about homosexual rape of boys and adolescent males. It can instill the psychosis of homosexuality/pedophilia in a male (“just killed a man, put a bullet in his head”). The beginning refers to the first time that he gave in to the impulse instilled in him as a boy by his rapist, which he just passed on to another boy, “killing” the man in him, so to speak.

Listen to it, read the lyrics. Any questions?

It’s gotten that bad in America. The Fem/Pervs have come very close to turning it into the devil’s abode. But some, like me, prayed that God would deliver it from a HRC presidency and so God has given us another chance.

Don’t be stupid and f*ck it up by only going half way, being neither hot nor cold, . . .:

From the Apocalypse of St. John, ch. 3:
15I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. 17Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: 18I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. 19As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. 20Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. 21To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. 22He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

“Bohemian Rhapsody”

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality.

Open your eyes,
Look up to the skies and see,
I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy,
Because I’m easy come, easy go,
Little high, little low,
Any way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me, to me.

Mama, just killed a man,
Put a gun against his head,
Pulled my trigger, now he’s dead.
Mama, life had just begun,
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away.

Mama, ooh,
Didn’t mean to make you cry,
If I’m not back again this time tomorrow,
Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters.

Too late, my time has come,
Sends shivers down my spine,
Body’s aching all the time.
Goodbye, everybody, I’ve got to go,
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth.

Mama, ooh (any way the wind blows),
I don’t wanna die,
I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.

I see a little silhouetto of a man,
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning,
Very, very frightening me.
(Galileo) Galileo.
(Galileo) Galileo,
Galileo Figaro
Magnifico-o-o-o-o.

I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me.
He’s just a poor boy from a poor family,
Spare him his life from this monstrosity.

Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?
Bismillah! No, we will not let you go. (Let him go!)
Bismillah! We will not let you go. (Let him go!)
Bismillah! We will not let you go. (Let me go!)
Will not let you go. (Let me go!)
Never, never let you go
Never let me go, oh.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Oh, mama mia, mama mia (Mama mia, let me go.)
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me.

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Oh, baby, can’t do this to me, baby,
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12

PS: Very few, if any, women have eluded the spell of the evil one, at least to some extent. If Sister Vassa, a Russian Orthodox nun, has no problem with calling heretical confessions “churches”, then the prince of this world has done his work well.

But, it’s not too late, or God would not have given us a reprieve. But it is only a conditional reprieve – conditioned on zeal.

Thanks Misha, I will never enjoy singing that song again, road trips will never be the same.

On a serious note, “giving up on America” is not the answer, so much as having hope for this entire planet, in my humble opinion. Our nation’s struggle between good and evil, applies to all nations on this planet. Just different degrees, and different subject matters. Russia, China, Germany, etc. have their unique internal struggles. Trump will not save the world from God’s wrath, materially perhaps our nation might enjoy a few good years, but spiritually we are a couple nails short in our coffin. The tide might have shifted slightly, but decade upon decade of media indoctrination, has brainwashed the masses. Remember, only one third of our nation voted, and truth be told, that is exactly how the powers that be, want it. The majority of Americans, are numb, and dumb to all the issues facing our nation, or the our planet. One example, on a segment of “Watters World” on Fox News, Mr. Watters was asking young adults on the beach, on the 4th of July. Why do we celebrate the 4th of July? Who did fight against, during the civil war? Who did we fight during World War 2? AND, the real tough one. When did the War of 1812 begin??? Ninety percent had no idea. Sad yet true. The majority only know what they hear on television, the movie theaters , and social media.

The rest of world is no different, so long as there is food on table, all is well, even murder, homosexuality, and nihilism, doe not bother most, just the way it is, they say. One example is in one of the most strict, and backwards Muslim nations, and the only one with nuclear weapons, Pakistan. Family honor murders every month we hear on the news, but the big secret there is their, huge homosexual problem within their married couples. Seems that because young boys are discouraged from dating young girls, many young boys and men have their first sexual experience with the same sex, usually friends, and cousins. Families turn a blind eye to this as boys, just being boys. Then later when all are married find sex with their wife unappealing, but nothing is spoken.(homosexuality is basically outlawed)Sadly homosexual men even have a shrine, The Ghazi Shrine, thousands of “devotees” go and pay “respect” to the saint, but really are just looking for anonymous, and casual same sex encounters.

Has God given us a reprieve? Who knows. Is Trump the means to such Reprieve, I really doubt it. Just a band aid on a bullet wound. As one actor said, in a movie I can’t remember, we are in a world of shit.

Misha! Thanks you’re very kind. You keep believing that President Trump will save us from this world of shit and faggotry. Last I read President Trump won’t touch the subject matter, he said its all ready decided, by the courts. In addition forty odd years of legalized abortion, not a peep from the republicans to reverse it and now you believe President Trump will reverse all our country’s sins! While it’s great to say President Trump, all I expect is that he preserves our borders, language, culture, and jobs here in our nation. Eat a snickers bar, jerk, it might help!

This is interesting but I’m not sure that the authors see the forest for the trees. Enlightenment Liberalism appears to have reached its apex and is now entering remission. I.e., it is a disease/virus of sorts or, for us Orthodox, a heresy. It apparently afflicted the majority of the members(the cells of the body, if you will) of the American body politic but was not strong enough to kill the host due to the foresight of the American Founding Fathers and their distrust of democracy and construction of the Electoral College to be a last bastion of sanity. We should really be more careful about using that word: democracy. It is not a good thing. They founded a republic.

The context was about the court case, the 14th amendment, and very secular in nature.

That said, I am trying to convince this fellow, the nature approach is a useless foray into whocaresville. Perhaps reflection on God and how this might affect or influence people with no sexual orientation IS important.

This is going to be a final post for me on Monomakhos because George crossed many lines with his essay about Obama and referring to his wife as Bruno. In fact, that tack will keep the lgtbqwxyz movement alive for another 4 years.

But I leave you with this thought.

A prepubescent child has no sexual orientation; gay marriage offers them utter confusion. Fact. Liberal thought would suggest otherwise. It would suggest it opens the door for their freedom, but it does not. It offers total confusion. Are they then not a victim of Jacobse’s weak argument, focus on excretia, the SCOTUS misapplied the 14th, but much more importantly a victim of the institution of gay marriage?

The conservative dislike and crediting of the victim mentality for gay marriage will create more victims because they are fighting gay marriage without thinking about the most important members of society who will become victims of gay marriage.

You are a hypocrite, and troll! You have stated that: “Everyone knows God has a p___s.” Yet are are offended by George calling Obama’s wife Bruno? While I did not care for George’s comment, your’s was beyond horrid, in fact blasphemy! You should be ashamed of yourself! Good riddance! Hope we never hear the likes of your REPUGNANT thoughts again, yet I’m sure a weasel like you, we will, or pop up with a new name.

A prepubescent child has no sexual orientation; gay marriage offers them utter confusion. Fact. Liberal thought would suggest otherwise. It would suggest it opens the door for their freedom, but it does not. It offers total confusion.

This is true and a good insight. Now ask yourself why that is? I submit that it is because of natural law, where we define natural law as comprehension of the divine order of things in nature, they way nature is constructed so to speak and the logic it displays. This is comprehensible even to a child since the structure of the soul and even the mind has an ordering congruent with the ordering of nature. It is comprehended first in the soul, on a level even deeper than intuition, and only later crystallizes into a concept.

Thus when you ask:

Are they then not a victim of Jacobse’s weak argument, focus on excretia, the SCOTUS misapplied the 14th, but much more importantly a victim of the institution of gay marriage?

…the answer is because regarding sexuality natural law also applies to the function of the body. Upstream I offered the examples only parenthetically but they still hold true: waste organs are not designed as sexual organs. This offends you apparently, but it should offend all of us because offenses against nature are naturally offensive. The only time the offenses ceases offending is when the behavior is discontinued or when the sin is habituated to the point where thinking changes. This is clear in St. Paul’s outline in Romans 1 where he describes homosexual sexual activity as a violation of the natural order and describes the long term effects of the inculcation of this sin within the person.

We can argue against the rulings that sanction gay couplings as legal marriage by citing the 14th amendment if we want, but an indisputable fact is that ‘gay marriage’ would never have gotten to SCOTUS unless there was a cultural shift first. The law was passed not based on legal reasoning alone. Rather, legal reasoning followed sentiment; the predisposition to view gay couplings as a civil right preceded the final ruling, as well as the assumption that denying these rights would be victimizing gay couples. That’s what I mean that the social programs of the left all rest in the common cradle of victimization.

To my last point you wrote:

The conservative dislike and crediting of the victim mentality for gay marriage will create more victims because they are fighting gay marriage without thinking about the most important members of society who will become victims of gay marriage.

This is unclear. Who do you mean by “…the most important members of society?” Do you mean children? If so, how will being clear about how nature really works victimize them?

Priests deal with people struggling with the passion of same-sex attraction. One of the first things that has to be untangled is the belief that same-sex attraction is a constituent of personal identity. This is a cultural norm that has been internalized that can be quite debilitating for a person seeking deeper communion with Christ who is dealing with this passion. It’s based on a false anthropology that, in the context of the Church and Orthodox Christian life, functions as a heresy (in pastoral terms). A good way to penetrate this fog is to assure the person that he is seen by both God and the priest as “(Baptismal name) son of the living God.” God (and hopefully the priest) see the man in the light of who he is by virtue of his adoption as God’s son (which his name signifies) and not in terms of the passions he feels and is struggling with.

I mention this only to explain that it is important to draw distinctions between the misconceptions in popular culture and and true (Orthodox) anthropology on forums such as this that are populated by Orthodox readers, especially in this era where some Orthodox priests (such as Fr. Robert Arida) seek to subvert the moral tradition.

So it’s not really legality we are arguing about or even the ideas of GAY Inc. we seek to reverse in the popular culture, not immediately anyway. It’s about the tradition we have received spoken in ways where those distinctions are made clear in ways they can be understood despite the cost of clarifying them.

When I spoke in Washington, DC a few years ago a few weeks before the Obergefell ruling came down I was under no illusion that that the Court was listening but it didn’t matter, not enough to prevent me from speaking anyway. Somebody had to say what the Orthodox tradition taught so I did.

Society is starting to understand people like you, and it is very, very ugly. Due to violent trauma, probably being sodomized as a child, some males develop such an intense sense of self-hatred and shame that it overwhelms them and they come to enjoy it. It is a form of psychosis or insanity. Stage one simply renders them into a homosexual orientation; i.e., makes them a “Betty”, a “catcher”, so to speak. But psychoses tend to intensify and defend themselves fiercely. That explains a lot of the queer verbal twists that one hears (pun intended). The psychosis simply has to soil everything it touches including words and thoughts.

In its most pronounced stage two, a homosexual/pedophile grows to own his own self-hatred and shame and desires to inflict it on other innocents as was done to him. At this stage, he can pass as straight, have a family, yet still be obsessed with finding Bettys to have sex with and boys to rape and turn into monsters like himself.

That is what homosexuality is. That is what a homosexual sees if they dare look into the mirror of their own souls. And it is nothing less than a curse of the devil himself. May God have mercy on their souls because, being a danger to themselves and others, especially children, we should have not mercy on them unless they repent, seek therapy or exorcism or die.

but an indisputable fact is that ‘gay marriage’ would never have gotten to SCOTUS unless there was a cultural shift first

This is true, but I don’t think the cultural shift is the widespread personal acceptance of homosexuality. I would posit that even today, even among homosexual “allies”, the vast majority of honest people have a disgusted personal reaction to the idea of homosexual activity.

The cultural shift is one of deference to strong opinion. I don’t think the Supreme Court looked at homosexuals and thought, “Oh yes, I can identify with their feelings.” Rather, they deferred to the homosexuals’ strong beliefs, and with no personal skin in the game, simply said, “Go do what you want.”

That is why if you oppose the “settled issue” of gay marriage in 2017, the response invariably is, “What does it matter to you? If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get gay-married.” We’re not allowed to have strong opinions if they inconvenience other people with strong opinions, basically.

One of the first things that has to be untangled is the belief that same-sex attraction is a constituent of personal identity.

Amen.

The so-called “coming out process” is actually the effort to normalize in one’s own mind the intrinsically disordered desires that a person finds him/herself with, first of all, and then force the “reformed” view on others. The first opposition that every single homosexual faces is their own conscience.

Unfortunately, the conscience is now something to be overcome, not something to be obeyed.

Great article. As someone who is old enough to remember JFK–in fact, I actually saw him with my own eyes–I can only say this: This country has sunk so low, morally, spiritually, and elsewhere, that unlike you, John, I think we are past the point of no return. I’d LOVE to have a President who has the guts to say that this country is morally and spiritually sick, sick, sick! And then lead by example and change things. But we’ll never see that. I for one am very, very tired of watching television and seeing openly gay characters or hosts on virtually every show, and having it being portrayed as normal. I’m sick of all the other crap I see too, that is too numerous to mention. Are we, as Orthodox Christians, so weak that we too have succumbed to this modernist BS? I see it every day. Our congregations don’t want modernism. They want TRUTH. If the Church thinks it’s going to be more “relevant” and more “inclusive” and more “attractive” by being modernist, they are dead wrong. People aren’t going to seek that in the Church, they are going to seek it in society and get it.

There’s an old Greek saying that goes, “A fish rots from the head down”. When the top of the food chain, whether it’s political or ecclesiastical, goes, then the rest of society and the country go with it. I’m terribly sorry, but that’s what I see both in our country and in Orthodoxy. The GOAA has become so liberal and elitist, it absolutely sickens me.

Really, if Trump knows this to be true, and a former Bush AG thinks there is substance to it, then he needs to demand to see the probable cause that was presented to the judge to obtain the warrant, going to court to get it if necessary. He’s the chief executive.

Trump may finally have them with this wiretapping thing. It sounds to me like it was Obama’s doing and that he was hell bent on infiltrating their campaign apparatus. The FISA application leaving off Trump’s name just to get into Trump Tower – that’s reaching. I want to see the requests they submitted, the best evidence they had supporting their horsesh*t.

Incidentally, I know what scares them so much about Trump and it would give me serious pause too if I did not have a strong faith in God:

They realize that he actually believes everything that comes out of his mouth and it terrifies them. The reason it terrifies them is that, though some of it is influenced by this or that advisor, really its all pure unfiltered Trump (i.e., what he processed from whatever experience). It is deeply unsettling for this reason: He believes it because he happened to say it, not because of any hard data. It makes sense to him, thus it must be true. And he trusts that instinct because it served him well in business. The drug is confidence, and it is the drug talking. It’s like the caffeine talking when you’re working on your third cup – you’re drawing up plans to nuke Mecca because it’s the right thing to do and God wills it.

Then you head out to work and it settles down.

But he’s the president and we’d just better pray he knows when he’s flying too high and needs to light somewhere.

George MichalopulosAug 17, 7:03 PM Are you accusing me of being in favor of genocide? –

Nate TrostAug 17, 5:47 PM We apparently disagree that opposing genocide is itself hateful. Or that Trump assigned blame where it belonged. What a surprise. And considering this blog is... –

George MichalopulosAug 17, 4:43 PM I'm not praising the neo-nazis. Some of them were armed and spoiling for a fight. Know what? Trump condemned them by name. But they had... –

George MichalopulosAug 17, 4:40 PM I must disagree, Nate. Trump blamed all sides for the hate. You can't tell me that Antifa/BLM isn't a hate group. If you do then... –

George MichalopulosAug 17, 4:38 PM Steve, I imagine I'm much older than you but I actually remember segregated schools. Black children actually learned in them. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been... –

George MichalopulosAug 17, 4:28 PM Thank you, I hope the Good Lord does help me. And you as well. –

George MichalopulosAug 17, 4:28 PM Bravo Mike! I for one am tired of the supposed taint that Christians are supposed to bear forever for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was... –